iPhoto will work just fine.

Also in response to the comment about dslrs and video… Now that the Nikon D90 is out, things have got to change.

http://www.apple.com/aperture/tutorials/

Check out the one on making books

I read your post, being in much the same situation – only, photography is not my hobby, but HAS TO BE my hobby (for PR use, I’m a musician). I appreciated that you said obvious things, as compared to the first (Eric’s) post, who did not appreciate this. Yes, iPhoto is a consumer and Aperture 2 a pro app. In my situation, I’m exactly in-between: it must look professional, but I’ll never be a pro (laking talent-time-ambition).

I looked at your pictures and was very pleased – you have a very good eye, and I very much liked the titles! They were so “obvious” that it’s delightful (ask me why?).
Only I missed your profile – “I’m male” – OK …

Thanks for your post!

if library size is an issue with you, have you tried using referenced files instead? may work better for you. i am very surprised at your library size though. i no have a single aperture library with photos from 1998 to current. i have over 100K photos with the last 20K being taken with a Canon 5D (12MB RAW files)…plus i have a lot of generated thumbnails in my library and still the library size is only 350GB.

For example, I have sorted photos by SERVICE, INDUSTRY, DATE, and COLOR.
So, let’s say, I want an AUTOMOTIVE (sub category within INDUSTRY) websiet (subcategory within SERVICE) created in 2006 (subcategory within YEAR), plus I only want Yellow color websites (subcategory in YELLOW)… I can find the results within seconds…
I don’t think you can do such an advanced search in any other software as conveniently as you do in Aperture.

Aperture also allows you to open the “Kewords HUD”, where you can Organize, Create, Move and MERGE keywords to manage them.

To make things better, then i can filter the results with RATINGS…

Can iPhoto08 do that? If so, then Aperture for me is not worth purchasing perhaps…

——————
I do have one question though….
I cannot wait to find out how you can PERMANENTLY add a keyword to a photo within Aperture. I have 50,000 photos and sometimes I have to reimport them to Aperture, and all Keywords applied to a photo in a previous instance is GONE for good when the image is reimported back to Aperture…

iTunes, however, DOES remember the information you apply to MP3 files… such as GENRE, COMMENTS, etc… You would think Apple would have applied the same to Aperture?

Anyway, I’m interested to hear from folks about how they store their photos. I’m still not sure I want to totally walk away from iPhoto. I have plenty of disk space but the thought of having two libraries seems weird.

So any thoughts? Do I just move everything to the Aperture library and if I ever want to work in iPhoto just move individual photos or events?

Can anyone share how they have organized their Aperture library after moving from iPhoto? Event -> Project is simple, but you can setup a much more complex hierarchy in Aperture and I’d rather do this once right than have to change it later.

Thanks a lot.

First of all, it is absolutely absurd to suggest using BOTH Aperture and iPhoto. I mean, MAYBE, if they shared the same library and if there were distinctly separate and complimentary uses for both apps, but that is certainly not the case. Using both means wasting enormous amounts of hard disk space – something that makes no sense given limited laptop hard disk capacities. It also means relying on an awkward and inefficient process of importing images (and video) from my digital cameras into one application, only to have to repeat the process with the other. Why on earth would anyone want to do this?

If grouping video clips with photos made no sense, then why does Apple allow it on iPhoto? I’ll tell you why – because when I come home from a trip I like to enjoy all my trip photos and video clips in the same context, rather than having to use two separate apps. Sure, iMovie or some other dedicated video app is appropriate for editing those video clips, but that’s an entirely different thing from browsing all media from a given event.

On top of all this, Apple continues on their stubborn-as-a-mule strategy of depriving users of the option to BROWSE media without having to IMPORT it. Don’t think this is a big deal? Try importing an existing collection of 10,000 or so digital photos into either app. Go on, I’ll wait. if these apps had a browse mode (which Lightroom does, by the way) then you could simply point to any image folder and browse to your hearts content INSTANTLY.

Apple has created an impressive app with Aperture, and version 2 demonstrates significant improvement to the user interface. But a lot of work still remains to properly integrate Aperture with other iLife apps.

Before wasting time talking about whether Aperture is worth the price, how about we consider it’s proper role, pros and cons, assuming it were completely free…

It was great. They covered a lot of stuff, and convinced me to purchase a copy ASAP.

On the books, they covered even making your own templates. Much more professional than anything iPhoto has to offer, or Lightroom.

I’m just looking at them now and they do seem quite nice…

For video, there are a wide range of different tools than are what’s needed for photography, and it makes sense to separate them in pro-level applications. iMovie has a movie clip inventory manager, so that might be the best place for them.

And the notion of needing to use BOTH iPhoto and Aperature and maintain and double the size of my photo library is just crazy. Some more thought needs to be put into Aperature.

However, at the end of it all, I only use iPhoto ‘08 all the time. Guess I am not ready to transofrm into the pro world as yet.

And yes – I hope we get to see a Mac version of Picasa. Its undoubtedly the best app out there for Windows in photo management. But I suspect that the whole iLife integration would make a Mac user stick with iPhoto.